Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/252

242 of things which the ancient seers foresaw and aspired toward, when "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

But, while science is disclosing the methods of mind, and preparing for it on earth a nobler and still more noble rôle, what are its testimonies as to the duration of mind—its immortality? Some of the most devoted adherents of scientific methods have reached conclusions which are unfavorable to mind's immortality. But it is not surprising, in view of the novelty and marvelousness of many lately demonstrated scientific truths, that even men of calm temper should be led to attach undue importance to them—to claim for them reaches and meanings which do not of right belong to them. Close as may be the demonstrated union between mind and body, no philosophy of organization and life satisfactorily accounts for the presence of mind. Mind is indeed unique, peculiar; has its own laws, and overleaps and undermines all mere material phenomena. The study of mind is, therefore, incomplete unless subjectively pursued. The mind must be questioned, must testify of itself, if we would arrive at anything approaching just conclusions with reference to it. This is indisputable from the fact that mind is that mysterious quality in us by which we explore all material phenomena. It is only, therefore, by due attention to mind's subjective contemplation that we gain the right to reason upon the phenomena of material things. A surveyor who should go around determining boundaries, directions, and areas, without having first put to severe tests his compass and chains, would be acting not a whit more absurdly than they who leave out of the study of material and mental phenomena a subjective study of mind. But, if only by questioning mind about itself we can rightly understand its nature, dare we, in conducting the inquiry, ignore a whole host of its most prominent intuitions? Surely not. But mind's testimony of itself is, that there are in it indefeasible principles of individuality, responsibility, and immortality. It would be strange, indeed, if this noble, this intensely royal, thing, which disdains to be classed with any material forces, however sublimated they may be, should be remanded to the companionship and fate of the phenomenal, the sensual, the perishing!

Happily for the theory of evolution, not all nor even the majority of its advocates have given assent to such conclusions. Mr. Darwin has ever conjoined with his marvelous disclosures of the relations of organic facts a spirit of religious reverence. Mr. Herbert Spencer avows that there are unseen, eternal verities which justify religion. Lessing, David Strauss, and Professor Helmholtz, could not reconcile themselves to the thought of a final destruction of the living race, and, with it, all the fruits of all past generations. Others among them, however, assume that, since mind is only known to us as a phenomenon